RELATIONSHIP BREAK UPS

The series had several emotional break-ups. How people react to this stressful situation added drama to the show. Such situations mirror real life.

Chances are good that you’ve already experienced a romantic break-up or two. Pairing up and eventually parting ways is part and parcel of the romantic experience. Nothing remarkable about that, right? Well, what happens after breakups, and the significant difference between how men and women handle them, is sufficiently fraught that some researchers have dedicated their whole academic careers to studying the phenomenon.

Craig Morris Ph.D., professor of anthropology at Binghamton University, is one such person. As lead researcher on a study recently published in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, he revealed that women experience more emotional pain after a breakup, but they recover more fully recover than men, who simply move on.

When 5,705 participants in 96 countries were asked to rate the pain of a breakup on a scale of 1 (none) to 10 (unbearable), women reported higher levels of physical and emotional pain, but they became emotionally stronger afterward. Men never fully recovered.

Morris ascribes the differences to biology. “Put simply, women are evolved to invest far more in a relationship than a man,” he says. For our female ancestors (and even today), the briefest encounter with a male could lead to long-term consequences like pregnancy and child-rearing. “It’s this ‘risk’ of higher biological investment that, over evolutionary time, has made women choosier about selecting a high-quality mate. Hence, the loss of a relationship hurts.”

For men, who have evolved to compete for the romantic attention of women, the loss of a high-quality mate might not hurt as much at first, says Morris. “The man will likely feel the loss deeply and for a very long period of time as it sinks in that he must start competing all over again to replace what he has lost—or worse still, come to the realization that the loss is irreplaceable.”
Studying breakups, specifically the grieving process attached to them, is an important academic focus says Morris, because most of us will have already experienced an average of three breakups by age 30, not to mention a divorce rate that still hovering around 50%.  At least one of these breakups will be devastating enough that it will affect our quality of life.

“People lose jobs, students withdraw from classes, and individuals can initiate extremely self-destructive behavior patterns following a breakup,” Morris says. The damaging effects can call for specific interventions.

Grace Larson, now a graduate student at Northwestern University, wondered whether participating in a study post-breakup would hurt or help participants heal. In a study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, Larson and the team of researchers at University of Arizona looked at “self-concept reorganization,” the process of seeing and defining oneself separate from one’s ex. Asking the participants to reflect on their relationships helped them build a stronger sense of who they were as single people.

The methods used to measure well-being and coping did improve the participants’ well-being, although the researchers can’t say for sure which aspects of the study caused the changes. It may relate to participants thinking about their breakups from a distanced perspective, says Larson. Or, “it might be simply the effect of repeatedly reflecting on one’s experience and crafting a narrative, especially a narrative that includes the part of the story where one recovers.”

For those struggling with the aftershocks of a relationship, Larson suggests finding ways to regularly reflect on the recovery process. “For instance, a person could complete weekly check-ins related to his or her emotions and reactions to the breakup and record them in a journal,” she says, or write about the process of the breakup as though talking to a stranger about it.

Rebuilding a clear and independent concept of yourself appears to be the biggest force for recovery, so Larson suggests that anyone who’s recently experienced a breakup should consider who he or she is, apart from the relationship. “If that person can reflect on the aspects of him- or herself that he or she may have neglected during the relationship but can now nurture once again, this might be particularly helpful.”

Morris recommends that men and women going through heartbreak reach out to friends and family. “Immerse themselves in literature on the topic. Reflect on things that they did (and more likely did not do) wrong. Most importantly, realize that they are not alone.”